The Comedienne Part 64

The garden was filled with a public of working-cla.s.s people and those from the poorer section of the city.

Janina and Wolska pushed their way through the crowd to that little office building in which there was a dressing-room for the performers, divided into a men's and women's compartment by a red cretonne curtain.

"I am already waiting!" came a hoa.r.s.e, drunken voice from behind the curtain.

"You can begin your part, I will come right away!" answered Wolska, dressing herself in feverish haste in a grotesque, red costume.

In a few minutes she was all ready for her appearance. Janina followed her out and took a seat facing the stage. Wolska, all flushed with hurrying and still closing the last b.u.t.tons and hooks of her costume, appeared on the stage, greeting the public with a long bow. The musician struck the yellow keys and at the same moment there arose the tones of a song:

Once upon a stump among the hills, Between the oaks there sat two turtle-doves, And I know not for what sport of love's They kissed each other with their bills.

The strains of the old, sentimental song from The Cracovians and the Mountaineers floated on, interrupted only by frequent bursts of applause, the banging of beer gla.s.ses against the tables, the clatter of plates, the slamming of doors and the reports or rifles in the shooting galleries. The lanterns diffused a hazy and muddy light; girls in white ap.r.o.ns and with their hands full of beer gla.s.ses, pa.s.sed in and out among the tables, flirted with the drinking men and flung cynical remarks and answers at those who accosted them. Ribald laughter and coa.r.s.e jokes flew around like fire-works and were immediately answered by broad, thoughtless merriment.

The public expressed its satisfaction with the singing by shouting, beating time with their canes, and banging their beer gla.s.ses. At moments the wind would entirely drown out the singing, or bend the few wretched trees with a rustling sound and scatter the leaves over the stage and the heads of the public.

Wolska continued to sing. Her red vaudeville costume, with low-cut front, gleamed like a gaudy spot against the blue background of the stage and excellently accentuated her thin, thickly painted face, her sunken and pale eyes, and her sharp features which looked like the skeleton-like face of a starving man. She swayed from side to side with a heavy motion to the measure of the song:

"Such ardent love took hold of me, I embraced Stach most tenderly."

Her voice floated through the garden with a hollow, rasping sound and added to the din made by that noisy and drunken crowd. Brutal laughs broke out in sharp, penetrating scales, and those bravos emitted by the drunken threats of a Sunday public and interrupted by hiccoughs, beat against the stage with a hoa.r.s.e and hollow roar together with the biting jibes that were not spared the singer. But she heard nothing and sang on, indifferent and cold to all that surrounded her. She flung forth tones, words, and mimicry with the automatism of a hypnotized woman, only at moments, her eyes would seek Janina's as though they were begging for pity.

Janina grew pale and red by turns, unable to endure any longer that alcohol-saturated atmosphere and that drunken din which filled her with aversion and disgust.

"I would rather die!" she thought. Oh, no, she would never be able to amuse such a public. She would spit in its eyes and scorn herself and then . . . if there were no other way out . . . drown herself in the Wisla!

Wolska finished her song and her partner, dressed in a Cracovian costume, went about among the drinking crowd with his notes in his hand, collecting money. Remarks that froze one with their cynicism and brutal frankness, were hurled into his face, but he only smiled with the dull smile of a habitual drunkard, nervously twitched his lips and humbly bowed his thanks for those ten-copeck pieces that were thrown on his notes.

Wolska, with closed eyes, stood beside the piano, nervously tugged at the golden lace of her waist and, groaning with painful anxiety, counted in her mind the number of copecks which her partner placed together with the notes beside her. The pianist again struck the keys and Wolska and her partner began to sing together some comic couplets, interwoven with a kind of "Krakowiak" which they danced in a half dreamy manner.

Janina could hardly wait for the end of the performance and, without saying anything about the impression that that drinking den had made on her, she took leave of Wolska and fairly ran away from that garden, that public, and that degradation.

During the entire day following, she did not leave her home. She ate nothing and hardly thought at all, but lay in bed and gazed blankly at the ceiling, following with her eyes, the last fly that crept drowsily and half dead over it.

In the evening, Sowinska came in, sat down on a trunk and, without any introduction, said harshly: "The room is already rented to another tenant, so to-morrow you can clear out of here. And since you owe us fifteen rubles, I will keep all your duds and give them back to you only when you pay me the money."

"Very well," answered Janina and she looked at Sowinska indifferently, as though nothing out of the ordinary were at stake.

"Very well, I shall go!" she added in a quieter tone and arose from the bed.

"You will doubtlessly manage to help yourself in some way, won't you? You will yet come to see me in a carriage, eh?" said Sowinska and an ugly, hostile light gleamed in her owlish eyes.

"Very well," repeated Janina in the same mechanical way and began to pace up and down the room.

Sowinska, growing tired of waiting for some kind of reply, left the room.

"So all is ended!" whispered Janina in a hollow voice and the thought of death became a conscious reality in her mind and shone alluringly.

"What is death? A forgetting, a forgetting!" she answered herself aloud, standing still and sinking her eyes in those murky deeps that opened up before her soul.

"Yes, a forgetting, a forgetting!" she repeated slowly and for a long time sat motionless, gazing at the flame of the lamp.

The night dragged on slowly, the house became quiet, the lights were gradually extinguished in the long rows of windows and an ever deeper silence spread itself about, until everything became steeped in this drowsy silence.

The gray light of dawn was already beginning to streak the horizon and to illumine the faint outlines of the housetops when Janina awoke from her torpor and gazed about the room. She felt fully determined, so she sprang up from her chair and, driven on by some thought that lit up her eyes with a strange fire, walked quietly to the door and opened it. But the noisy click of the latch which she closed after her penetrated her with such a strange, sharp fear that she reeled back against the frame of the door and breathed heavily for a few moments. Finally, she quietly pulled off her shoes and boldly, but with the utmost caution, pa.s.sed through the hall and entered a large room adjoining the kitchen which was used as a dining room and a workroom in the day time and as a sleeping room for Mme. Anna's apprentices at night. The close and heavy air of the room almost suffocated Janina. With outstretched hands and bated breath, she stole toward the kitchen so slowly that those minutes seemed an eternity to her. At moments, she paused and, overcoming her trembling that awful trembling listened to the loud breathing and snoring of those sleeping there and then went on again, setting her teeth with a desperate strength. Large drops of perspiration rolled down her forehead from exertion and fear and her heart beat so slowly and painfully that she almost felt the pulsation of it in her throat. The kitchen door was open and Janina pa.s.sed through it like a shadow, but she stumbled against the bed of the servant-girl, which stood very near the door. She grew numb with fear and for a long time stood motionless and breathless, almost in a state of suspended animation, gazing with terrified eyes at the bed whose dim outlines she could scarcely make out in the darkness. But finally, rallying all her strength and courage, she walked boldly to the shelf upon which stood various kitchen utensils and supplies and felt one after another with the greatest caution, until finally, her hand rested upon a flat oblong bottle containing essence of vinegar.

She had seen it here a few hours ago and now, having found it, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it up so violently from among the other articles that a tin cover fell with a crash upon the floor. Janina unconsciously bent her head in terror, for the clash of the falling cover resounded with such a tremendous echo in her brain that it seemed as though the whole world were crashing down on her.

"Who's there?" called the servant, awakened by the noise. "Who's there?" she repeated in a louder voice.

"It is I . . . I came for a drink of water," answered Janina with a choking voice, after a long while, nervously pressing the bottle to her breast. The servant indistinctly mumbled something and did not speak again.

Janina ran to her room, as though pursued by the furies of madness, no longer caring whether anyone heard her or might awaken and, having reached it, locked the door and only then collapsed, half dead from, exhaustion and trembled so violently that she thought she would fall to pieces. The tears, which she did not even feel, began to stream down her face. They gave her so great a relief that she fell asleep. In the morning Sowinska again reminded her that it was time to move and, brutally opening the door before her, told her to get out. Janina dressed hastily and, without answering a word, left the house.

She walked along the streets, feeling nothing but her homelessness and that dizziness in her head which was engulfing all her thoughts.

She pa.s.sed through Nowy Swiat and the Ujazdowskie Allees and did not stop until she reached the lake in Lazienki Park.

The trees stood dying and their yellow leaves spread a golden carpet over the paths. The tranquillity of an autumn day hung in the air and only now and then a flock of sparrows flew by with a noisy twitter, or the swans upon the lake cried out mournfully and beat with their wings the muddy-green water that looked like worn velvet.

All around could be seen the destruction wrought by the hand of golden autumn. Wherever it touched the trees, there the leaves withered and fell to the ground, the gra.s.s dried up and the last autumn asters bent their lifeless heads and dripped with dew, as though weeping tears after death.

"Death!" whispered Janina, pressing in her hands the bottle that she had secured on the previous night and she sat down, perhaps on the same bench on which she had sat that spring. It seemed to her that she was slowly drowsing away and that her thoughts were fading, for her consciousness had begun to disintegrate and she was already ceasing to feel and to know. Everything was falling away from her and dying, like the nature about her that also seemed to be burning out and drawing its last breath.

A rapturous feeling, full of peace and calm, filled Janina's heart, for the entire past was vanishing from her memory; all her miseries, all her disappointments, and all her struggles faded away, paled and dispersed, as though absorbed by that pale autumn sun that hung over the park. It seemed to her that she had never pa.s.sed through them, never felt anything, never suffered anything. It seemed to her that she was curling up within herself, growing smaller and shrinking, like that withered leaf that hung upon the barbed wire of the fence, all ready to drop and be hurled down into the abyss of death by that light breath of wind. Then again it seemed to her that she was ripping to pieces, like that spider web that tangled itself about the gra.s.s and floated in glistening filaments through the air; that she was unwinding into such gossamer strands, into ever finer and finer filaments, until she had vanished away into infinity and lost all consciousness of herself. This feeling moved her strongly and a strange tenderness and pity for herself filled her heart with sorrow.

"Poor girl! How unhappy she is!" whispered Janina, as though she was speaking of some other person.

Janina's soul was so rapidly disintegrating in its agony that she no longer had a full and clear conception of what the miseries were that had vanquished her, what misfortunes had broken her, nor did she know why she was weeping or who she was.

"Death!" she repeated mechanically and that word found a deep and unconscious echo in her brain and nerves and pressed only a few tears from her eyes.

She stopped, without knowing why, before the marble figure of the dancing Faun. The rains had darkened his stony body and rusted the locks of his hair that curled like hyacinths, and his face, furrowed by streams of water, seemed to have grown longer since the spring, but in his eyes there gleamed and burned that same mockery and his crooked legs continued their mad dance. "Lo! lo! lo!" he seemed to sing, shaking his flute, laughing and jeering at everything, and raising boldly to the sun his head which was crowned as though with a bacchantic wreath by the withered leaves that had fallen on it.

Janina gazed at him, but being unable to remember or understand anything, she pa.s.sed on.

On Nowy Swiat, in one of the chambres garnies, she asked for a room, ink, letter-paper, and envelopes. When everything had been supplied, Janina locked herself up in the room and wrote two letters: one brief, dry, and painfully ironical letter to her father and another longer and entirely calm one to Glogowski. She notified them both of her suicide. She addressed the letters with the greatest accuracy and laid them in a conspicuous place.

Afterwards Janina calmly took from her pocket the bottle with the poison, uncorked it, held the liquid up to the light and then, without thinking or hesitating any longer drank it to the very dregs.

Suddenly, she stretched out her arms, a gleam of terror shot across her face, her eyes closed, as though blinded by some measureless void that opened before, and she fell p.r.o.ne upon the floor, in dreadful convulsions of pain.

A few days later, Kotlicki, having returned from Lublin where he had installed Topolski's company, was sitting in a coffee-house, looking over the newspapers, and by some strange chance his eye fell upon the following item among the local accidents of the day:

"THE SUICIDE OF AN ACTRESS"

"On Tuesday, in the chambres garnies on Nowy Swiat, the servants were aroused by moans issuing from one of the rooms which an hour ago had been engaged by an unknown woman. They broke open the door and a dreadful sight met their eyes. Upon the floor lay writhing in pain a young and beautiful woman. Two letters left behind by her revealed that she was a certain Janina Orlowska, a former chorus girl who appeared last season in the N. N. Theater under Cabinski's management.

"A physician was called and the unconscious woman was taken to the Hospital of the Infant Jesus. Her condition is serious but it still holds forth some hope. Miss Orlowska poisoned herself with essence of vinegar, as is attested by the bottle that was found in her room.

The cause of her desperate act is unknown, but an investigation is being made. . . ."

Kotlicki read this over several times, knitted his brows, tugged at his mustache, read it again and, finally, crumpled up The Courier and threw it in anger upon the floor.